voluptuary
/vəˈlʌpt͡ʃʊˌɛɹi/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.15 in modern English
18
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
5
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
One whose life is devoted to sensual appetites; a pleasure-seeker, a sensualist.
Example Sentences
- "But Mrs. Cole, in oppoſition to this, aſſured me that the gentlemen I ſhould be preſented to, were, by their rank and taſte of things, infinitely ſuperior to the being touch'd with any glare of dreſs, or ornaments, ſuch as ſilly women rather confound, and overlay, than ſet off their beauty with; that theſe veteran voluptuaries knew better than not to hold them in the higheſt contempt, […]"
- "His features might have been called good, had there not lurked under the pent-house of his eye, that sly epicurean twinkle which indicates the cautious voluptuary."
- "St. Clare, who was in heart a poetical voluptuary, smiled as Miss Ophelia made her remark on his premises, […]"
- "Another Greek, the historian Megacleides, singles out Heracles as the supreme voluptuary."
- ""I told you so!" he said to himself under his breath, and breathing deeply like a voluptuary he advanced towards his victim."
- "Dawn Reynolds was an eighteen-year-old alabaster beauty with cobalt eyes and the figure of a ripe voluptuary."
Etymology
From French voluptuaire, or directly from its etymon Late Latin voluptuārius, from Latin voluptārius (“pleasure-seeker; agreeable, delightful, pleasant; sensual”), from voluptās (“delight, pleasure, satisfaction”) + -ārius (suffix forming adjectives from nouns). Voluptās is derived from volup (“with pleasure; agreeably, pleasantly, satisfactorily”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *welh₁- (“to choose; to want”)) + -tās (suffix forming feminine abstract nouns indicating a state of being).
Origin
- Source language: French
Word Breakdown
- Root: *welh₁-, voluptuaire, voluptuārius, voluptārius
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /vəˈlʌpt͡ʃʊˌɛɹi/
- British English: /vəˈlʌptʃʊəɹi/